Nils Frahm – Stranger Thing

On his new album, German audio artist Nils Frahm adds a spooky instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin to his eclectic aural menagerie.

- By Jack Needham

Nils Frahm has spent a lifetime turning the sounds in his head into reality-and he has the equipment to prove it.

Inside the composer's studio in Funkhaus Berlin, a former radio broadcasting center once used by the East German government, you'll find the Klavins M450-the world's tallest piano, on which the lowest bass string stretches nearly 13 feet. In 2015, Frahm toured with three pipe organs fitted with microcontrollers that transformed them into wooden synthesizers; the instruments were so large that they needed their own dressing room.